


Coup de Foudre

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana Villiers receives news of Stephen Maturin’s imprisonment in the Temple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coup de Foudre

It was just after ten o’clock on a late spring morning in the Hôtel de la Mothe and a spare though rich breakfast had been laid out in the breakfast room overlooking the l'orangerie: fresh croissants, raspberry jam, sweet butter and sliced strawberries with crème fraîche. Diana Villier's very genial host, Adhemar de la Mothe had just poured his houseguest a cup of fresh brewed coffee from a handsome Sèvres coffee pot, a gift from Louis XV to de la Mothe’s grandfather. He passed the cup, saucer and teaspoon to her in a gesture of consummate elegance and grace. It was her favourite time of day to spend catching up with him on the previous night’s happenings and social scandals of Paris, though de la Mothe bristled at any suggestion that he was a gossip.

"Diana, _mon chouchou_ ," de la Mothe said, passing the sugar to her, "I have some shocking news I learned last night." Diana raised an eyebrow, waiting for the juicy tidbit to follow. "Étienne is apparently in Paris now, in prison in the Temple. They believe him a spy."  
  
"Étienne?" Diana said, trying to gather of which of their acquaintances he was referring. It took her several seconds. "You mean Stephen? Stephen Maturin? My Stephen Maturin?" Diana said in sheer disbelief and de la Mothe nodded, the powder falling softly in a very light dusting from his wig onto the bottle green, watered silk shoulders of his morning coat. "A spy? My God, that is absurd." She laughed out loud. "Are they deaf, dumb and blind? He is no more a spy than I am, indeed, far less suited to be one than any man I have ever known. Stephen, a spy? He has little interest in the affairs of anything that does not live in a nest or have scales or that he cannot dissect. He could barely tell apart two sisters of our acquaintance in Dover, kept calling one by the other’s name until they were both so aggrieved by the insult that they cut him repeatedly, snubbing him openly on the street."  
  
_" Bien sûr, je suis d'accord,"_ La Mothe said, shaking his head. _"Vraiment, ce pays est allé en enfer_. This is the natural outcome of twenty-five years of filthy, ignorant rabble in charge." Regretting his outburst, he looked to make certain that they were alone and that the doors were closed. They were and he pulled his chair closer to hers.  
  
"Surely he will be released in a day or so," Diana said, putting down the cream pitcher. "Surely they will realise he was taken in error and they will let him go."  
  
"It does not sound so very likely, _ma belle,_ " de la Mothe said, quietly.  
  
"Well, then what shall happen?" A shadow crossed Adhemar's face, giving lie to the paint, powder and rouge, suddenly ageing him dramatically and he sighed.  
  
"It may all blow over but I have known too many innocents who took a ride in the tumbrel to ever assume such a thing. One thinks they could not do that to Étienne, but after Lavoisier, truly no possibility is too extreme. _C'est dommage_." Diana's sapphire eyes widened in horror and she was racked with sudden nausea.  
  
"Adhemar, surely not -- you do not mean that, do you? That they could execute him? Just like that?"  
  
"Just like that, _ma mie. Je suis désolé,_ " he said and he squeezed her hand very gently.  
  
"There must be something we can do, someone with influence, someone powerful -- surely Adhemar..." He looked at her somewhat surprised at her fervor.  
  
"Perhaps, but I do not hold out much hope, _chérie._ I shall make some discreet inquiries but the way I have seen these things over the last twenty-five years..." He trailed off. He was surprised by Diana's agitation and reasoned that it was because she was English. He had lost so very many friends who were guilty of absolutely nothing that he was now somewhat inured, becoming deeply depressed by the systemic terror and disgusted but no longer destroyed, shocked or outraged.  But how surprising was her reaction -- he had not thought her so very attached to Étienne. Certainly, somewhat like a sister, but he reasoned, it must be the unfamiliarity of losing friends and family in such a manner. He remembered the first time in 1789 and how sickened he had been; he remembered how he had pleaded with his erstwhile “wife” not to pursue an annulment; such a sweet and foolish girl and his crushing impotence and despair when they took her. He and Diana finished their very late _petit déjeuner_ in silence.

 

 

Diana closed the door to her lavishly appointed room and lay down upon the bed. To her immense annoyance and bewilderment she then wept as she had not ever remembered weeping since her mother had died when she was ten years old. They were going to kill Stephen. To kill him. That much was plain. That was what de la Mothe was saying. Some French governmental officials were going to act to kill Stephen Maturin and it seemed that there was nothing to be done.

No, it could not be. It could not. She absolutely could not lose Stephen. She had never understood stories of people risking their lives for others and suddenly, she felt as though she would do absolutely anything to save him.  Her reaction amazed her. How many times had she fled from him, how many promises and near and actual engagements had she broken, how inexcusably badly had she behaved? Now her heart was breaking with the realisation that she was about to lose the only real friend she had ever truly possessed; the only person who had ever treated her with unremitting kindness and respect no matter how shamefully she had abused his affections nor how low she had fallen. That person was now in a dank prison. The only person on earth upon whom she could ever depend, no matter how dire the circumstances and who had never failed in his consideration of her was going to die.

She sat up with a start, for just as suddenly as flint meeting steel, a spark flashed in her and she realised to her dumbfounded amazement the wholly inconceivable had come to pass. She, Diana Villiers, who doubted that she had ever truly loved anyone in her entire life save her mother long, long ago, realised that she actually loved Stephen Maturin, an eventuality she had previously dismissed as being a complete impossibility. She was even more astonished to realise that she was now in love with small, ugly, peculiar, shabby and relatively impoverished Stephen Maturin. It was all so very singular that she gasped aloud.

One more residual sob shook her and she stood up, went to the basin and washed her face with cold water, holding the cloth over her eyes. Sobbing into a pillow was not going to save Stephen's life. She had no power, no position, no leverage. She was a foreigner in Paris and cultivating acquaintances amongst powerful men to obtain the traffic of influence to spare Stephen's life was out of the question, there was simply not enough time. He could be dead in a day or two.  Clearly, she had to devise some plan and then act immediately. Time was of the essence.  
  
She had virtually nothing of any use in this situation. Virtually nothing except for possessing a gem of staggering beauty and value that was coveted by every wife and mistress of the most powerful men in Paris, many of whom when they had seen her wearing it had been seized with the most transparent envy she had ever witnessed. She thought of all the women she had met, all the wives and mistresses of politicians and ministers and suddenly one woman sprang to mind: Adélaïde Gros, the wife of Marshal Gros of the Great Council, an extremely powerful man and an astute politician. The man was a parvenu with a grasping wife with immense social aspirations. From what Diana had seen, the husband would do nearly anything to please his wife and his wife had looked at the Blue Peter with more desire than Diana had ever seen any man behold a woman. Madame Gros' lust for the stone had been embarrassingly palpable.

This plan meant losing her treasure, the Blue Peter, forever of course. She glanced into the looking glass over the bureau at her reddened eyes and picked up her comb and undid her fine, jet-black hair to prepare it to be freshly styled for this social call. She would have flung the Blue Peter and the rivière with it into the Seine that very instant if it meant that Stephen would be released and safe. She had never felt anything so strongly in her life and so, she called for her servant and then opened the armoire to select which frock to wear to call upon Madame Gros.


End file.
